Oh, cruel irony! Having killed my Olympus
Tough yesterday, this morning I had my best snorkel ever – yes, better than the
Great Barrier Reef, than Galapagos, than Tahiti. And all I had were my eyes to
see it, and my brain to remember it. Ouch. So primitive. (So I've had to use Dai Mar's photos for that.)
We transferred from the skiff to a local
Captain Zodiac rigid inflatable, captained by flamboyant Preston and ably
assisted by big and initially enigmatic Buddha up the front in his reflective
sunglasses. He was the sealife whisperer, and started by conjuring up a couple
of humpbacks as we roared out along the coast on a sparkling blue-sky morning.
They waved their tails at us, and we continued to Kealakekua Bay, where Captain
Cook (“a famous cartographer” Buddha explained) was murdered in 1779 – along with
33 Hawaiians, Preston murmured, whose names are not recorded on the
white-painted obelisk by the water’s edge.
Here we dropped into the slightly cool
water to be rewarded by simply stunning snorkelling: the water crystal clear
(except where it was blurred by colder fresh water seeping up out of the rock,
after filtering down from the volcano peaks), the light strong and bright, and
the fish abundant both in number and variety. Schools of brilliant yellow
tangs, big turquoise parrot fish biting at the coral, see-through trumpet fish,
orange slate-pencil and black spiny sea-urchins, and all sorts of other fish I
can’t name – black, orange, blue, yellow, striped, cross-hatched, spotted. All
were busy going about their business – or, in the case of one school, dozing on
the bottom. It was fascinating and I was enthralled. And I didn’t even see the
octopus! Brilliant.
Eventually, we were all hauled out, but
then the outing turned a bit dramatic. Buddha noticed a couple struggling to
right their capsized kayak, stripped off, dived in and – rather show-offily, I
thought – swam underwater to where they were thrashing about, looking agitated.
He righted the kayak, and got the woman aboard, but when the man capsized it
again climbing on, ushered them to our skiff where they gratefully accepted the
offer of a lift. He then tied on the kayak and rode it behind the boat, meaning
he was handy to rescue our sun umbrella when it flew off, Preston having
forgotten to take it down in all the excitement.
We returned the couple and their
sub-standard kayak to shore with a few stern words from Buddha to the renter,
and then zoomed away again, having accomplished our second marine rescue in
three days. Karma rewarded us with a manta ray sighting, spotted by Buddha
naturally and prompting a spectacularly tight 360 by Preston; and then some
spinner dolphins including a baby as we returned to the Safari Explorer.
The next event was a taster in an outrigger
canoe which, on a calm day with smooth seas, seemed a reassuringly stable craft
and much easier to propel than a kayak – six paddles in the water will do that,
of course. [Interestng note for NZ readers: waka is the canoe; ama is the
outrigger.] Then I explored the town of Kona, which really didn’t take long –
it’s very touristy, full of shops selling paintings, Hawaiian shirts and
sarongs, shell ornaments, jewellery and Kona coffee. There’s a small,
plain-looking palace, and a church with a model of a brig inside whose story I
skipped (sorry) – for me, the interest was in the splendid trees along the
seafront, and all the local life on the shore and the water. It was training
day for half a dozen young outrigger teams, who were stimulatingly
enthusiastic.
There was more enthusiasm that night as Dai
Mar presented the slideshow he’d been building up all week. He’d got some
really good shots of us all, and the fish, sunsets, people and activities, and
there was a lot of “Oh yes! I’d forgotten that!” It’s a nice touch that
UnCruise gives us a memory stick with all this on, since our own memories are
clearly so deficient.
Our last dinner, our last night, and there
was some carousing and drinking, some singing around the piano, and
self-congratulation on what a good group we were. With some truth, I do agree: it
doesn’t always happen, in my experience, that strangers gel so well. I think it’s an UnCruise
thing: their type of cruise attracts mainly active, positive people, no matter
their age. It’s a definite plus.
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